Light field displays have emerged to provide viewers a more accurate visual reproduction of three-dimensional (“3D”) real-world scenes without the need for specialized viewing glasses. Such displays emulate a light field, which represents the amount of light traveling in every direction through every point in space. The goal is to enable multiple viewers to simultaneously experience a true 3D stereoscopic effect from multiple viewpoints, by capturing a light field passing through a physical surface and emitting the same light field through a reflective display screen. Doing so has the potential to revolutionize many visual-based applications in areas as diverse as entertainment, business, medicine, and art, among others.
Light field displays typically include an optical diffuser or reflector to transform an incoming thin beam of light into a desired shape. Incident light consisting of multiple beams is spread into a range of angles to generate images representing multiple views. The tailoring of the shape depends on anisotropic reflective microstructures on the diffuser surface, such as, for example, microstructures forming a sinusoidal pattern. If the microstructures do not reflect light uniformly, the brightness of the multiple views will not be uniform. As a result, viewers may perceive some parts of the images as brighter or darker than others.